Getting your MacBook ready for sale is an important step to make sure your personal data stays safe and the new owner can start fresh. We’ll walk you through it in 4 simple steps.
Reset your MacBook before selling: 4 steps
Follow the 4 steps below to reset your MacBook before selling it.- Back up your data You don’t want to lose anything important when resetting your MacBook. So always back up first, for example using Time Machine — the built-in macOS backup tool. To do this, connect an external drive to your MacBook. Go to > System Preferences > Time Machine. Click 'Select Disk' and choose your drive. Turn on Time Machine and start the backup process.
- Turn off ‘Find My Mac’ and iCloud Before resetting your MacBook to factory settings, make sure to turn off ‘Find My Mac’. Go to > System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud and untick 'Find My Mac'. Then you can sign out of iCloud: > System Preferences > Apple ID > click 'Sign Out'.
- Sign out of Apple services iTunes: Open iTunes, go to Account > Authorisations > Deauthorise This Computer. iMessage: Open Messages, go to Messages > Preferences > iMessage and click 'Sign Out'.
- Erase your hard drive and reinstall macOS Lastly, erase your hard drive and reinstall macOS. This gives the new owner a fresh start. Restart your MacBook in Recovery Mode by holding Command (⌘) + R while it boots up. In the macOS Utilities window, choose 'Disk Utility' and click 'Continue'. Select your startup disk (usually 'Macintosh HD'), go to the 'Erase' tab, choose a format (APFS is recommended for SSDs), and click 'Erase'. Once done, close Disk Utility and select 'Reinstall macOS' from the macOS Utilities window. Follow the steps to complete the installation. When it asks to select a region, turn off your MacBook — the new owner can finish setup from there.